Standardizing blood pressure measurement - is it possible?

Abstract

It was a minor scandal that scientists paid no attention to Dr. Korotkov's provocative foray into their territory with his method for measuring blood pressure. That was in 1905, the "miracle year" in physics, yet no one wondered why it took a surgeon to resolve a physical measurement problem. More than 100 years later, Korotkov's method remains largely unchanged and unchallenged - a gold standard indeed. This imposes the question of why science and engineering keep failing us in what we need to know first and do best -physical examination of the pulse. We comment on this question to show that we still do not have the necessary means for even discussing the issue and that, in the gigantic business of modern medicine, this issue is the proverbial butterfly behind the chaos in healthcare.